Decoys have been used for years by hunters and other naturalist seeking to attract live animals such as waterfowl using artificial means. Various sporting good companies, such as Herter's, offer for sale a wide variety of such decoys ranging from silhouettes, to full-bodied decoys, to Wind socks. When in use, these decoys are often deployed in “spreads”, meaning that a number of individual decoys are deployed together to simulate the gathering of a flock of waterfowl.
As the design and use of decoys has advanced over the years, decoys have been developed with various mechanical or electrical attributes to help the decoys simulate the motion of their live counterparts. The thought being that decoys in motion will be more realistic and thus more effective in attracting their targets than fixed or static decoys. Live waterfowl, such as ducks, for example, often land on the water in large flocks and dive into the water in search of food. Typical ways used to effect motion in decoys include the use of swinging pendulums attached to the base of the decoy to cause the decoy to rock, resulting in motion in not only the decoy, but also in the surrounding water. Decoys have also been provided with electrical or battery-powered motors that, when activated, vibrate to cause ripples around the decoy, spin wings to simulate flapping, move feet that splash, push the decoy through the water, or pull floating decoys below the water surface.
While such known motion decoys have been used for some time, known designs typically suffer from various drawbacks. From a construction perspective, such known designs are often complex, heavy, require a rigid bearing structure attached to the waters bottom under the decoys, or otherwise undesirable to the user who must deploy in the field.
Moreover, the use of the electrical supplements to cause decoy motion suffer not only from high costs, but also from exposure to the elements, such as saltwater, and short battery life made worse by cold weather, causing reduced life span of the decoys. From a performance viewpoint, known motion decoys designed to imitate the natural motion of their live counterparts, typically fail to do so. The existing motion decoys that do look natural, use ripples to do so, and are only effective on still water. In addition due to their bulk, cost of batteries, cost of each decoy, awkwardness to transport, it is impractical to use more than a few of these decoys in a spread.An example of this is U.S. Pat. No. 6,442,885 issued to Kenneth William Payne September 2002, which causes floating decoys to bob under the water surface by running a string from the decoy to a crankshaft attached to poles and bearings rigidly attached to the bottom under the decoys, and driving the crank shaft with an electric motor also rigidly attached to the bottom. Although this may work under specific condition it is cumbersome, relies on a consistent shallow water depth with a soft bottom, and battery power motor.Another U.S. Pat. No. 2,793,456 issued to R. D. ARGO in May 1957 caused floating decoys to bob on the water surface to simulate feeding ducks.
This consist of a frame rigidly attached to the bottom, a shaft with floating decoys strapped to it with a lever arm attached to a string that runs back to the blind where a hunter pulls the string each time he wants the decoys to bob. This suffers the same problems as the above referenced Patent by Payne except that hunter manually pulls activates the decoys.